Tories, Lib Dems in hard bargaining over coalition formation

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The Tories and Liberal Democrats worked overtime to reach consensus on thorny issues blocking the formation of the first coalition government in Britain since World War II, with the hard bargain over make or break issues running into the third day.
Negotiators for the Conservatives and Lib

The Tories and Liberal Democrats worked overtime to reach consensus on thorny issues blocking the formation of the first coalition government in Britain since World War II, with the hard bargain over make or break issues running into the third day.

Negotiators for the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats will meet again later today for a crunch meeting to spell out their demands and a clearer picture is expected to emerge only tomorrow.

Conservative emerged as the second largest party with 306 seats in the 650-member House of Commons in the General Election which has thrown up a hung parliament.

Tory and Lib Dem leaders David Cameron and Nick Clegg spent 70 minutes last night in face-to-face talks on the neutral ground of Admiralty House in Whitehall, the seat of the Government here, with both sides describing the encounter as "constructive and amicable".

Clegg also spoke to Prime Minister Gordon Brown on phone at the request of the Prime Minister in a conversation which the Lib Dems again described as "amicable".

Brown has offered to talk to the Lib Dems talks if no deal is reached with the Conservatives.

A spokesman for the Lib Dem leader indicated that Brown's overture would not deflect Clegg from pursuing his strategy of talking to the Tories first on a possible solution to the impasse caused by Thursday's general election.

"The Liberal Democrats will continue with the approach which Nick Clegg has set out and which was endorsed today by the parliamentary party and the party's federal executive," said the spokesman.

Tory sources said no conclusion to talks is expected until Monday at the earliest, but today's meeting at the Cabinet Office will bring a sharper focus on the issues that may make or break a Tory/Lib Dem deal.

Cameron made clear he is willing to seek consensus with Lib Dems over issues like education, the green economy and taxation. But doubts remain over whether any agreement can be found on the thorny questions of Europe and electoral reform.

Polls suggest widespread public support for a fairer voting system following an election in which Lib Dems won fewer than one-tenth of seats after securing almost a quarter of votes and Conservatives were denied a majority despite taking a greater proportion of votes than Labour in 2005.

Some 62 per cent of people questioned for the Sunday Times, 60 per cent in the Mail on Sunday, 59 per cent for The People and 48 per cent in the Sunday Telegraph backed proportional representation for Westminster elections.

16,000 votes denied Tories absolute majority in UK polls

David Cameroon-led Tories would have won absolute majority in the House of Commons had only 16,000 voters spread across 19 constituencies voted differently in the May 6 UK general elections, experts said today.

The findings by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher claim that the Tories came tantalisingly close to securing a clean victory at the polls.

"Cameron came so near and yet so far," write the directors of the elections centre at Plymouth University.

"Just 16,000 extra votes for the Tories, distributed in the 19 constituencies in which the party came closest to winning, would have spared us a weekend of negotiation and speculation," the Sunday Times quoted them as saying.

The Labour party, meanwhile, saw its tally slump to 258 in a House of Commons with a strength of 650 seats, with 649 results declared. A total of 326 seats are required for an absolute majority.

The Tories failed to win majorities in about 30 Labour-held marginal constituencies they had expected to win, suggesting that in some seats the extra funds of Lord Ashcroft, the billionaire party donor, were less effective than hoped.

The smallest Labour majority, just 42 votes, was secured by Glenda Jackson, the former actress, in the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency in north London.

In several others, the Tories failed by a small number of votes, falling short by 92 in Bolton West, Ruth Kelly's former seat. Ed Balls, the schools secretary, scraped home with a majority of 1,101 in his West Yorkshire seat.

The Rallings and Thrasher analysis shows the Tories ended up with 36 per cent of the vote in the UK, followed by Labour on 29 per cent and the Liberal Democrats on 23 per cent.

With turnout in the election up from 61 per cent in 2005 to 65 per cent, the Tory share of the entire electorate, 24 per cent, was higher than the 22 per cent who voted for Labour in 2005.

Had the positions of the parties been reversed, and Labour secured 36 per cent of the vote, Gordon Brown would have been returned with a majority of 64.

The analysis also suggests that a relatively small push would give the Tories a majority if a second election is held in the near future.

A swing of 1.8 per cent from Labour would give the party an overall parliamentary majority, while a swing of 2.5 per cent would put Cameron 20 seats ahead of all other parties in the Commons.

Another reason why Cameron failed to win outright victory was because the Lib Dem swing to the Tories was just 1 per cent.

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